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Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior IT Architect for the IBM Storage product line at the
IBM Systems Client Experience Center in Tucson Arizona, and featured contributor
to IBM's developerWorks. In 2016, Tony celebrates his 30th year anniversary with IBM Storage. He is
author of the Inside System Storage series of books. This blog is for the open exchange of ideas relating to storage and storage networking hardware, software and services.
(Short URL for this blog: ibm.co/Pearson )

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Wrapping up my week's theme on IBM's acquisition XIV, we have gotten hundreds of positive articles and reviews in the press, but has caused quite a stir with the[Not-Invented-Here] folks at EMC.We've heard already from EMC bloggers [Chuck Hollis] and [Mark Twomey].The latest is fellow EMC blogger BarryB's missive [Obligatory "IBM buys XIV" Post], which piles on the "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" [FUD], including this excerpt here:

In a block storage device, only the host file system or database engine "knows" what's actually stored in there. So in the Nextra case that Tony has described, if even only 7,500-15,000 of the 750,000 total 1MB blobs stored on a single 750GB drive (that's "only" 1 to 2%) suddenly become inaccessible because the drive that held the backup copy also failed, the impact on a file system could be devastating. That 1MB might be in the middle of a 13MB photograph (rendering the entire photo unusable). Or it might contain dozens of little files, now vanished without a trace. Or worst yet, it could actually contain the file system metadata, which describes the names and locations of all the rest of the files in the file system. Each 1MB lost to a double drive failure could mean the loss of an enormous percentage of the files in a file system.

And in fact, with Nextra, the impact will be across not just one, but more likely several dozens or even hundreds of file systems.

Worse still, the Nextra can't do anything to help recover the lost files.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If any disk drive module failed, the system would know exactly whichone it was, what blobs (binary large objects) were on it, and where the replicated copies of those blobs are located. In the event of a rare double-drive failure, the system would know exactly which unfortunate blobs were lost, and couldidentify them by host LUN and block address numbers, so that appropriate repair actions could be taken from remote mirrored copies or tape file backups.

Second, nobody is suggesting we are going to put a delicateFAT32-like Circa-1980 file system that breaks with the loss of a single block and requires tools like "fsck" to piece back together. Today's modern file systems--including Windows NTFS, Linux ext3, and AIX JFS2--are journaled and have sophisticated algorithms tohandle the loss of individual structure inode blocks. IBM has its own General Parallel File System [GPFS] and corresponding Scale out File Services[SOFS], and thus brings a lotof expertise to the table.Advanced distributed clustered file systems, like [Google File System] and Yahoo's [Hadoop project] take this one step further, recognizing that individual node and drive failures at the Petabyte-scale are inevitable.

In other words, XIV Nextra architecture is designed to eliminate or reduce recovery actions after disk failures, not make them worse. Back in 2003, when IBM introduced the new and innovative SAN Volume Controller (SVC), EMCclaimed this in-band architecture would slow down applications and "brain-damage" their EMC Symmetrix hardware.Reality has proved the opposite, SVC can improve application performance and help reduce wear-and-tear on the manageddevices. Since then, EMC acquired Kashya to offer its own in-band architecture in a product called EMC RecoverPoint, that offers some of the features that SVC offers.

If you thought fear mongering like this was unique to the IT industry, consider that 105years ago, [Edison electrocuted an elephant]. To understand this horrific event, you have to understand what was going on at the time.Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, wanted to power the entire city of New York with Direct Current(DC). Nikolas Tesla proposed a different, but more appropriate architecture,called Alternating Current(AC), that had lower losses over distances required for a city as large and spread out as New York. But Thomas Edison was heavily invested in DC technology, and would lose out on royalties if ACwas adopted.In an effort to show that AC was too dangerous to have in homes and businesses, Thomas Edison held a pressconference in front of 1500 witnesses, electrocuting an elephant named Topsy with 6600 volts, and filmed the event so that it could be shown later to other audiences (Edison invented the movie camera also).

Today's nationwide electric grid would not exist without Alternating Current.We enjoy both AC for what it is best used for, and DC for what it is best used for. Both are dangerous at high voltage levels if not handled properly. The same is the case for storage architectures. Traditional high-performance disk arrays, like the IBM System Storage DS8000, will continue to be used for large mainframe applications, online transaction processing and databases. New architectures,like IBM XIV Nextra, will be used for new Web 2.0 applications, where scalability, self-tuning, self-repair,and management simplicity are the key requirements.

(Update: Dear readers, this was meant as a metaphor only, relating the concerns expressed above thatthe use of new innovative technology may result in the loss or corruption of "several dozen or even hundreds of file systems" and thus too dangerous to use, with an analogy on the use of AC electricity was too dangerous to use in homes. To clarify, EMC did not re-enact Thomas Edison's event, no animalswere hurt by EMC, and I was not trying to make political commentary about the current controversy of electrocution as amethod of capital punishment. The opinions of individual bloggers do not necessarily reflect the official positions of EMC, and I am not implying that anyone at EMC enjoys torturing animals of any size, or their positions on capital punishment in general. This is not an attack on any of the above-mentioned EMC bloggers, but rather to point out faulty logic. Children should not put foil gum wrappers in electrical sockets. BarryB and I have apologized to each other over these posts for any feelings hurt, and discussion should focus instead on the technologies and architectures.)

While EMC might try to tell people today that nobody needs unique storage architectures for Web 2.0 applications, digital media and archive data, because their existing products support SATA disk and can be used instead for these workloads, they are probably working hard behind the scenes on their own "me, too" version.And with a bit of irony, Edison's film of the elephant is available on YouTube, one of the many Web 2.0 websites we are talking about. (Out of a sense of decency, I decided not to link to it here, so don't ask)

Yesterday's announcement that IBM had acquired XIV to offer storage for Web 2.0 applicationsprompted a lot of discussion in both the media and the blogosphere. Several indicated thatit was about time that one of the major vendors stepped forward to provide this, and it madesense that IBM, the leader in storage hardware marketshare, would be the first. Others were perhaps confused on what is unique with Web 2.0 applications. What has changed?

I'll use this graphic to help explain how we have transitioned through three eras of storage.

The first era: Server-centric

In the 1950s, IBM introduced both tape and disk systems into a very server-centric environment.Dumb terminals and dumb storage devices were managed entirely by the brains inside the server.These machines were designed for Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), everywhere from bookingflights on airlines to handling financial transfers.

The second era: Network-centric

In the 1980s and 1990s, dumb terminals were replaced with smarter workstations and personalcomputers; and dumb storage were replaced with smarter storage controllers. Local Area Networks (LANs)and Storage Area Networks (SANs) allowed more cooperative processing between users, servers andstorage. However, servers maintained their role as gatekeepers. Users had to go through aspecific server or server cluster to access the storage they had access to. These servers continuedtheir role in OLTP, but also manage informational databases, file sharing and web serving.

The third era: Information-centric

Today, we are entering a third era. Servers are no longer the gatekeepers. Smart workstationsand personal computers are now supplemented with even more intelligent handheld devices, Blackberryand iPhones, for example. Storage is more intelligent too, with some being able to offer file sharingand web serving directly, without the need of an intervening server. The roles of servers have changed,from gatekeepers, to ones that focuses on crunching the numbers, and making information presentableand useful.

Here is where Web 2.0 applications, digital media and archives fits in. These are focused on unstructured data that don't require relational database management systems. So long as the useris authorized, subscribed and/or has made the appropriate payment, she can access the information. With the appropriate schemes in place, information can now be mashed-up in a variety of ways, combined with other information that can render insights and help drive new innovations.

Of course, we will still have databases and online transaction processing to book our flights andtransfer our funds, but this new era brings in new requirements for information storage, and newarchitectures that help optimize this new approach.

Well, it's 2008, which could mark the end to RAID5 and mark the beginnings of a new disk storagearchitecture. IBM starts the year with exciting news, acquiring new disk technology from a smallstart-up called XIV, led by former-EMCer Moshe Yanai. Moshe was ousted publicly in 2001 from hisposition as EMC's VP of engineering, and formed his own company. It didn't take long for EMC bloggersto poke fun at this already. Mark Twomey, in his StorageZilla blog, had mentioned XIV before back in August,[XIV], and again todayin [IBM Buys XIV].

To address the new requirements associated with next generation digital content, IBM chose XIV and its NEXTRA™ architecture for its ability to scale dynamically, heal itself in the event of failure, and self-tune for optimum performance, all while eliminating the significant management burden typically associated with rapid growth environments. The architecture also is designed to automatically optimize resource utilization of all the components within the system, which can allow for easier management and configuration and improved performance and data availability.

"We are pleased to become a significant part of the IBM family, allowing for our unique storage architecture, our engineers and our storage industry experience to be part of IBM's overall storage business," said Moshe Yanai, chairman, XIV. "We believe the level of technological innovation achieved by our development team is unparalleled in the storage industry. Combining our storage architectural advancements with IBM's world-wide research, sales, service, manufacturing, and distribution capabilities will provide us with the ability to have these technologies tackle the emerging Web 2.0 technology needs and reach every corner of the world."

The NEXTRA architecture has been in production for more than two years, with more than four petabytes of capacity being used by customers today.

Current disk arrays were designed for online transaction processing (OLTP) databases. The focus was onusing fastest most expensive 10K and 15K RPM Fibre Channel drives, with clever caching algorithmsfor quick small updates of large relational databases. However, the world is changing, and peoplenow are looking for storage designed for digital media, archives, and other Web 2.0 applications.

One problem that NEXTRA architecture addresses is RAID rebuild. In a standard RAID5 6+P+S configuration of 146GB 10K RPM drives, the loss of one disk drive module (DDM) was recovered by reconstructing the data from parity of the other drives onto the spare drive. The process took46 minutes or longer, depending on how busy the system was doing other things. During this time,if a second drive in the same rank fails, all 876GB of data are lost. Double-drive failures are rare,but unpleasant when they happen, and hopefully you have a backup on tape to recover the data from.Moving to slower, less expensive SATA drives made this situation worse. The drives have highercapacity, but run at slower speeds. When a SATA drive fails in a RAID5 array, it could take severalhours to rebuild, and that is more time exposure for a second drive failure. A rebuild for a 750GBSATA drive would take five hours or more,with 4.5 TB of data at risk during the process if a second drive failure occurs.

The Nextra architecture doesn't use traditional RAID ranks or spare DDMs. Instead, data is carved up into 1MBobjects, and each object is stored on two physically-separate drives. In the event of a DDM loss, allthe data is readable from the second copies that are spread across hundreds of drives. New copies aremade on the empty disk space of the remaining system. This process can be done for a lost 750GB drive in under20 minutes. A double-drive failure would only lose those few objects that were on both drives, so perhaps1 to 2 percent of the total data stored on that logical volume.

Losing 1 to 2 percent of data might be devastating to a large relational database, as this could impactthe entire access to the internal structure. However, this box was designed for unstructuredcontent, like medical images, music, videos, Web pages, and other discrete files. In the event of a double-drivefailure, individual files would be recovered, such as with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager backup software.

IBM will continue to offer high-speed disk arrays like the IBM System Storage DS8000 and DS4800 for OLTP applications, and offer NEXTRA for this new surge in digital content of unstructured data. Recognizing this trend, diskdrive module manufacturers will phase out 10K RPM drives, and focus on 15K RPM for OLTP, and low-speedSATA for everything else.

Update: This blog post was focused on the version of XIV box available as of January 2008 that was built by XIV prior to the IBM acquisition. IBM has since made a major revision, made available August 2008 thataddresses a variety of workloads, including database, OLTP, email, as well as digital content and unstructuredfiles. Contact your IBM or IBM Business Partner for the latest details!

Bottom line, IBM continues to celebrate the new year, while the EMC folks in Hopkington, MA will continue to nurse their hangovers. Now that's a good way to start the new year!